LAPD detectives are very concerned about a troubling video that went viral – showing a person following a police officer and flashing a handgun.
Investigators are still trying to track down the person behind this video.
“Someone may be sending a threat,” says one member of the LAPD Wives Association. Many of the group’s members have seen the disturbing video, which has rattled the city’s law enforcement community.
“The hatred toward the officers isn’t going to accomplish anything. It’s just going to create a bigger divide,” an LAPD officer’s wife told KCAL9/CBS2.
“They just want to do their job and yet all this hatred is coming at them. And it’s becoming more and more violent….they are so scared that their husbands are not going to come home,” she said.
The video was posted on Instagram and circulated on Twitter Monday, but has since been taken down.
According to the LA Times, it’s still unclear when the video was taken. The recording — which has no sound—is a 15-second clip taken from the inside of a car parked behind a black-and-white police cruiser that’s pulled over to the side of the road.
The person recording “briefly angles the gun for the camera” before hiding it under “some sort of sweatshirt or blanket,” the Times reports. The camera then cuts back to the patrol car, showing an officer getting out and walking away.
LAPD is taking the matter “very seriously” and the investigation remains open.
LAPD spokesman, Cmdr. Andrew Smith, said the department’s robbery-homicide detectives, who typically handle more complex or high-profile cases, were heading the investigation and were in the process of trying to “authenticate” the recording.
